Hidden RSS agenda getting exposed

The Congress party has brought out a booklet on the six months of the Modi government calling it a “U-Turn Sarkar”. Essentially, the booklet claims that the Modi government has done a U-turn by reversing the stand taken by the BJP on a number of policy issues. While in the opposition, the BJP had opposed many of the UPA government’s policies, now in the six months of its government, it has contradicted itself and decided to follow the same policies.

There is a lot of truth in this charge. Basically, the Congress is saying that the BJP is just like them. The record of the six months of the Modi government has shown that it follows economic policies that were pursued by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government like pushing for 49 per cent FDI in insurance; large-scale PSU disinvestment; deregulating diesel pricing; hiking railway fares and adopting Aadhar scheme and the cash benefit scheme that were introduced by the UPA government and so on and so forth.

This underlines the basic truth that the Congress and the BJP represent the same class interests.

There is also a similarity in their attitude to pamper big capitalists. For Congress their favourite was Mukesh Ambani to protect whose interests the Congress changed the Petroleum Ministers twice.

In the case of Narendra Modi, the pet capitalist is Gautam Adani whose wealth has risen exponentially in the past six months. One of Adani’s companies has managed to get a loan of Rs. 6,200 crore from the State Bank of India, which is the single largest amount of loan given to a company so far. Hence, there is no difference between the Congress and the BJP as far as crony capitalism is concerned.

The Congress was constrained because the UPA government had no majority in the Lok Sabha and had to rely on support of some other parties from outside. Therefore, some of the policies it advocated and pushed for could not be realised. The BJP is in a stronger position having a majority in the Lok Sabha, so it can take up the same policies with greater vigour.

So what is being witnessed is a rightwing offensive under the auspices of the Modi government. FDI in railways for the first time; coal allocation ordinance which seeks to open coal mining to private commercial interests; dilution of the land acquisition act and so on. At the same time, the corporate interests are advanced by the move to change the labour laws and deprive the working class of the limited protection afforded to them under these laws. While assuring the corporates and big business of “achhe din” the Modi Government has set about squeezing the poor. This is most blatantly seen in the steps to curtail the Rural Employment Guarantee Act and denude it of its right to work character.

In the sphere of foreign policy, Modi has visited a record number of countries in the past six months.

By: Prakash Karat